While Republican Kerry Roberts said colleges should be banned “to save America,” he co-sponsored legislation this year to promote higher education.

Sept. 10, 2019, 12:12 AM CDT
By Alex Johnson

A state senator in Tennessee on Monday night said it should have been obvious that he was joking when he suggested that higher education be abolished because it’s a “liberal breeding ground.”

Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican who represents a suburban district north and west of Nashville, was discussing a legislative session on an abortion measure on his weekly radio show last week when he recounted a “diatribe” that he said was delivered by a woman who “goes off” on white lawmakers.

The woman complained that “we’ve never done anything for black people,” Roberts said on WDBL-AM of Springfield. He said the woman accused lawmakers of being “just hate-filled idiots.”

His voice rising to a shout, Roberts said: “If there’s one thing that we can do to save America today, it’s to get rid of our institutions of higher education right now and cut the liberal breeding ground off! Good grief!”

He wasn’t joking. When he said, “If there’s one thing that we can do to save America today”, he means now, while Donald Trump is president. If they could, he and many other wingnuts would eliminate education for working working-class people. That would make them much more easily indoctrinated, manipulated and exploited.